Toilets are generally equipped with a hinged seat and a hinged cover or lid both of which should be lowered to the closed position following use of the toilet. An open toilet bowl does not present a particularly attractive appearance and creates other problems as well. Small children and household pets can be attracted to an open toilet and may attempt to enter the bowl. This is obviously undesirable from the standpoint of sanitation and can also be hazardous if the attempt is successful.
If both the cover and toilet seat are left in the raised position, the condition can be highly discomforting to a subsequent user who fails to notice the situation.
Toilet bowl covers and sometimes the seat as well are often left in the open condition through carelessness or inadvetence.
Efforts have heretofore been made to provide alarms which generate an audible or visible signal when a toilet bowl cover is in the open position. As heretofore constructed such alarms are subject to problems that create inconvenience or discomfort to users of the toilet and which discourage the use of such alarms.
Activation of an alarm while the toilet is occupied can be distracting and embarassing to the person using the toilet. One prior solution to this problem provides a pressure sensitive switch attached to the underside of the cover which inactivates the alarm as long as the back of a person using the toilet bears against the cover. This is not a fully reliable solution to the problem as persons using the toilet do not necessarily exert pressure on the cover or may do so only intermittently.
A seat cover position alarm should preferably not be activated immediately after usage of the toilet as the person may proceed to lower the seat and cover. The above described prior construction addresses this problem by including a timer which delays the alarm for a fixed period after the pressure sensitive switch senses that no pressure is being exerted on the raised seat cover. This is also not fully reliable since as pointed out above, users of the toilet may not exert pressure on the cover. Also, expiration of a fixed time period does not necessarily means that the person will not close the seat and cover before departing.
It is also preferable under many circumstances that the alarm sound only for a limited period if the seat cover is left up.
The present invention is directed to overcoming one or more of the problems discussed above.